t laughing again. "My darling, you don't know how you amuse me."

It was all forced: it was all unnatural. He, the most delicate, the most
refined of men--a gentleman in the highest sense of the word--was coarse
and loud and vulgar! My heart sank under a sudden sense of misgiving
which, with all my love for him, it was impossible to resist. In
unutterable distress and alarm I asked myself, "Is my husband beginning
to deceive me? is he acting a part, and acting it badly, before we have
been married a week?" I set myself to win his confidence in a new way.
He was evidently determined to force his own point of view on me. I
determined, on my side, to accept his point of view.

"You tell me I don't understand your mother," I said, gently. "Will you
help me to understand her?"

"It is not easy to help you to understand a woman who doesn't understand
herself," he answered. "But I will try. The key to my poor dear mother's
character is, in one word--Eccentricity."

If he had picked out the most inappropriate word in the whole dictionary
to describe the lady whom I had met on the beach, "Eccentricity" would
have been that word. A child who had seen what I saw, who had heard what
I heard would have discovered that he was trifling--grossly, recklessly
trifling--with the truth.

"Bear in mind what I have said," he proceeded; "and if you want to
understand my mother, do what I asked you to do a minute since--tell me
all about it. How came you to speak to her, to begin with?"

"Your mother told you, Eustace. I was walking just behind her, when she
dropped a letter by accident--"

"No accident," he interposed. "The letter was dropped on purpose."

"Impossible!" I exclaimed. "Why should your mother drop the letter on
purpose?"

"Use the key to her character, my dear. Eccentricity! My mother's odd
way of making acquaintance with you."

"Making acquaintance with me? I have just told you that I was walking
behind her. She could not have known of the existence of such a person
as myself until I spoke to her first."

"So you suppose, Valeria."

"I am certain of it."

"Pardon me--you don't know my mother as I do."

I began to lose all patience with him.

"Do you mean to tell me," I said, "that your mother was out on the sands
to-day for the express purpose of making acquaintance with Me?"

"I have not the slightest doubt of it," he answered, coolly.

"Why, she didn't even recognize my name!" I burst out. "Twice over the